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CNN Live Sunday

15-Year-Old Suicide Pilot Expressed Sympathy for Osama bin Laden

Aired January 06, 2002 - 17:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, the 15-year-old pilot who commandeered a small plane before crashing into a Tampa skyscraper yesterday apparently wrote a note ahead of time expressing his support for Osama bin Laden, and said his actions were deliberate.

Tampa police chief there says he would characterize Charles Bishop's death as a suicide. Police also say Bishop violated airspace at McDill Air Force base after taking off from a nearby airport. Witnesses say Bishop didn't try to avoid the 42-story tower before slamming into the 28th and 29th floors. Employees of a restaurant on the building's top floor were working at the time, but no one besides the pilot was killed or hurt.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF BENNIE HOLDER, TAMPA POLICE: During a subsequent investigation and search of the scene, a note was found which belonged to Bishop. According to the note, Bishop clearly stated that he has acted alone, without any help from anyone else. He did, however, make a statement expressing his sympathy toward Osama bin Laden and the event which occurred on September 11, 2001. More importantly, at this time there is no information to support Bishop's connection with any terror organization.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: The White House said last night it does not suspect Bishop's flight was an act of terrorism.

CNN's Mark Potter joins us now from Tampa with more details on these new developments. Mark, I just know when we were carrying the news conference live and when we started to hear the police chief describe what he says were Bishop's motivations, his sympathy with Osama bin Laden, his support of September 11, there was an audible gasp in our newsroom. It was just something we didn't expect to hear.

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. We didn't expect to hear it either. It was a very dramatic development. But they also underplayed it. They wanted to make the point that while the young man wrote what he apparently wrote -- and we have not seen the note and it was not read to us directly, it was characterized by the police chief -- they want to make the point that they do not believe that he truly had links to Osama bin Laden, was not involved in any terrorist activities, that he was simply a disturbed young man who decided to do this on his own, and in effect committed suicide after taking this plane from an airport nearby, flying for about nine to 12 minutes, according to the NTSB, starting out in St. Petersburg area, where he was in a flight school.

He was assigned to pre-flight the aircraft. Instead of doing that, he flew off on his own, without permission, he didn't have the license to do that. He took off in a northerly direction, and then he hooked a very hard southeast turn, which took him over McDill Air Force base. He flew 100 feet over the runway, and then he kept going. He was in their airspace for about a minute, we're told, then he went north again, heading up toward Tampa, where he then crashed into the building.

And the NTSB investigator says it appears that at all times that he had control of the aircraft, including up to the moments when he slammed into the building late yesterday afternoon. But again, officials here are saying that despite the dramatic tone of that note, they do not believe at this stage after talking to other people and looking at the note and looking at the circumstances that he truly was involved with Osama bin Laden or any of his terrorist supporter.

LIN: Well, Mark, what do investigator know about this young man?

POTTER: Not very much that they have revealed. They say that the investigation is still continuing, but they do describe him as a loner, someone who apparently was troubled. We will learn a lot more in the days to come. But they say that this was a deliberate act of a young man who planned it out, who wrote a note, and you know, slammed into the building and killed himself.

One of the points they do make is that the timing for everyone else around here was relatively good in that it occurred on a Saturday late afternoon when few people were downtown. If it had happened during a weekday, this is a very crowded area, and there could have been certainly more fatalities and more injuries, and it could have been a much worse circumstance.

Also, the plane did not blow up. It just went into the offices of a law firm. The wing fell off. There was no fire. And so, it was a fortuitous circumstance, at least in that regard. But again, the young man's life was lost.

LIN: Lucky in the timing. What about the boy's mother? Have investigator spoken to her?

POTTER: I believe they have. I think we've seen pictures of that, but I cannot tell you anything about that.

The other thing I want to tell you, Carol, is that obviously this raises serious questions about security at the McDill Air Force base which is the home to the U.S. Command, which -- the Central Command, which is overseeing the war in Afghanistan. And this young man flew right over McDill, and the planes that were scrambled had to come from Homestead, Florida, which is south of Miami, a long way away, and of course they did not get here on time. A military official told a news briefing here that officials did not consider the young boy's flight across the airfield a threat, but if he had turned inward rather than going straight across the peninsula where this base is located, it would have been a threat. The question was asked, well, what would they have done then -- and he said, well, we can't discuss security.

Now, what we have been told elsewhere is that they don't have the capability at McDill to scramble fighters; they don't have them. And they had to come from somewhere else. So, a very serious security question at McDill has been raised by this incident involving a 15- year-old boy who took this plane and flew it across the air base and then went on into the downtown area of Tampa.

LIN: Right. And even the fighters that were scrambled from Homestead still didn't arrive at the scene on time to really intercept or do anything about it.

POTTER: That's right.

LIN: So, lots of question about security of general aviation.

Thank you very much, Mark Potter, reporting live from Tampa, on that very interesting news conference there today.

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